


The Blackbird and the Morning Star

by Wren Truesong (waywren)



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I Don't Even Know, Lady Killer, M/M, Other, Stargazing, Train of Thought, Unrequited Love, Up To You How It Ends, musings, or maybe not, shameless exploitation of metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywren/pseuds/Wren%20Truesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he was wise, he wouldn’t keep stargazing.   But stars don't have to love you back; they shine anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blackbird and the Morning Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oryx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/gifts).



> Many thanks to my long-suffering betas, Gamlain and Ellen Brand. 
> 
> After reading Empty Mask ( http://www.fancomic.com/vesperia/resources/raven/emptymask.htm ), I'm honestly not sure whether to refer to Casey as Casey or Canary; in order to preserve some very nice theme naming, I've compromised by making one a title for the other.
> 
> It's been very interesting writing this ship; I hope I've given you something you can love.

Raven calls himself old because he _feels_ old, damn it. He’s on his third name, for sure; his fourth life, depending on how you count. How many times does a man have to _die_ before he’s allowed to stop pretending?

Raven counts it like this: First there was Damuron, second and thoroughly useless son of the noble house of Atomais, bought a commission by his more than embarrassed father to get him out of the (now long lost) city of Pharihyde and more than willing to go along with anything that got him out of town before somebody lynched him. This (un)worthy was better known by the only one alive to remember (Raven himself) as Damuron the Schmuck. Birth through year twenty-four-and-a-half... or thereabouts.

Then there was Damuron, _just_ Damuron, thanks, and never mind his noble wastrel friends _or_ his noble family, proud Lieutenant of the Canary Brigade and hapless admirer of its Captain, Casey. He lasted a good six months on hope and honor before he died at twenty-five, in pain and despair, on the butchering ground called Mt. Temza... the poor kid.

Schwann and Raven sort of dance around each other like one of those formula globes Rita likes to build just before she brings down the lightning or the fire or the ice or what have you. Schwann was cobbled together from spare parts and broken dreams and a general’s mad desperation, and limped along until his thirty-fifth year. Or his tenth, more like. He’s the second one who ended rather better than he began. Not nearly as pretty as Schmuck to Lieutenant, but dying to save the comrades he’d once betrayed was really pretty cool; even the imaginary commoner who lived on empty words had to admit that. (It really had been an excellent mask; some of Alexei’s best work had been putting that life together, making a ‘true knight’ and a commoner out of a wastrel Atomais of Pharihyde. Even Master Drake still wanted Schwann, called him the model of knighthood, and you’d think a man like _that_ would know better.)

Raven’s the one that’s left, born of spare feathers (and lies, always lies) collected at some time he can’t really determine, all stuck into the tar ball salvaged from the more forgivable bits of Schmuckdom (being a reckless, feckless skirt-chaser of remarkable chivalry and unbelievably upright character makes an excellent cover for being a subtle but unserious leader of men; okay, maybe there was some of the Lieutenant in there, too), and has lasted... eight years or so. Maybe Raven will make it into the body’s forties. Good luck with that.

Of course, that’s if anyone makes it to ten _days_ older. Tomorrow they go to Tarqaron, and face Duke.

_Duke._

Wise old men of Stupidly (beautifully) Brave Vesperia should be flopped across one of Aurnion’s best beds, snoring away.

Experienced, mature men of the most heroic guild that ever walked the soil of Terca Lumereis should be keeping a lovely young lady company in one of Aurnion’s slightly lesser-quality beds. He’s _only_ thirty-five, really. Quite handsome to look at. _Most_ considerate of his partners. Exceedingly... heh heh... _gifted._ A prize for any lady!

Raven being Raven, he’s...

...stretched out on one of the stone arms of the long-dead barrier blastia, stargazing.

Old, he’ll usually admit to. Experienced, probably. _Wise?_ Ha.

If he was wise, he wouldn’t keep stargazing.

Not that anyone would realise that it’s a star he’s watching. It looks more like he’s keeping a discreet eye on the head of his guild as _he_ stargazes. But then, Raven’s stars have always been human. It never matters what _his_ name is. 

Casey was a knight who called herself a bird, whose brigade heraldry was a wing, and he always wanted wings to fly after her with; it’s why Alexei called him a S(ch)wan(n), why he dubbed himself Raven. Why he laughed when Estelle said a bird dropped her compact out of the sky. 

But she was always so much more than that; Casey the Canary, the _true knight_ , was everything he ever admired, ever dreamed of admiring. Honestly, she was what he _learned_ to admire; it’s not like he’d had any idea of what a ‘true knight’ could be until she taught him by being it. Nothing shines quite so bright as a young person with something they’re willing to die for, and Casey shone like that, stepped out to put herself and her principles on the line every day of her knighthood, and _lived_ it, whole-heart, in the meantime. Bravery, justice, the will to protect people who couldn’t protect themselves and the skill to back it up... that completely unconscious beauty of body and soul, sparkling far away in the heavens where you couldn’t ever reach, but oh spirits, you _wanted_ to... 

She was a star, if ever there was one. 

So is Yuri Lowell.

This might sound stupid at first; Raven certainly hadn’t associated the dark, terse kid sulking in the next cell with Casey, or really with anybody at all. He’d just been bored, and maybe a little intrigued, and Yuri was someone to talk to.

Someone to talk to from the Lower Quarter, who cared for it as Casey had.

Nobody’d cared for the Lower Quarter in a long, long time... especially not Raven. 

Slipping the kid the key was the _least_ Raven could do.

It got him in deep shit when they realised that was how The Princess (as she was then; Estelle fits her a lot better, and he’s glad of that) got out of the castle, but hell, it’s not like he really cared. 

It took awhile for that petrified part to resurrect, and a lot more meetings.

Capua Nor wasn’t the one, just trick and leave and no time to enjoy his face; neither was Torim, though _you need to see a doctor for your tendency to unconsciously cause trouble for others_ was funny as hell. ...And the warning to stop putzing around so he didn’t get clapped back into jail was oddly sweet, in a rough-edge-of-his-tongue mama-cat kind of way. 

Man, when _did_ he realise Yuri was shining? When did he look up and fight not to clutch at the old blastia (couldn’t let Yuri’s little rag-tag group of fussbudget kids realise there was something wrong with the Fishy Old Man, they cared too much, made _him_ care too much), because Yuri’s eyes snapping at him in warning was too much like Casey’s over the wrong end of an arrow?

...Keiv Moc, probably, and that would even be in order, worse luck. Not that he’s sure. It’s all a blur of being just mysterious enough and _I won’t be responsible for what I’ll do if you make any sudden moves_ and standing back to back, quipping for their lives, _I’ll make sure your gravestone reads, ‘here lies the world’s biggest sap._ ’

...That’s where they’re most different, really; Casey never was one for snarky patter. All earnestness and honour and dedication and mirror-bright armour... kind of like that nice lad, Flynn.

Maybe that’s _why_ they’re different. Casey’d _met_ a real knight as a child, been saved by him, been able to keep that shining image in her mind, a mentor as bright as her armour. She’d made her faith her armour and her honor into her bow; she was Alexei’s best, hand-picked, and with her Canary Brigade she would _live_ how the Knights could truly be. 

Yuri’s true knight was _Flynn._ And nobody knew better than Yuri how hard that kid had to fight every single day just to keep himself going, much less save the world. _And_ they were both themselves Lower Quarter kids; darling street rats, they were. Flynn was idealistic, but he didn’t trust like Casey did. 

(Raven’s pretty sure that of the pair, _Flynn’s_ the one who carries lockpicks.) 

No shining mentor, no dream goal; only struggling equals who took up knighthood in the neglect and corruption that sprang up in the ashes of Alexei’s idealism. Schwann was far from the only man to have his dreams die in the war; he just didn’t fill up the gaping hole in his chest with ambition. With Casey and the entire Canary Brigade gone, all that was left was the Royal Guard and the old line, which managed to make the old ways even worse thanks to conniving and malignant neglect. 

No wonder one worked harder and the other gave up in disgust.

But that’s how Yuri shines; he might have turned away, might have dropped the Knights and sworn never to return, but he’s never let that stop him doing good, from sticking up for everyone he can influence, everywhere his one sword can reach. He lives his ideals, too; he’s never really stopped, just expanded his focus and his range. 

He just gets amusingly _twitchy_ if you accuse him of being anything more than a thug who happens to be good at fighting.

Casey never twitched, not about anything but her boyfriend. 

That poor rat bastard. At least now he can go back to Casey in whatever comes after; Raven wonders when she’ll finish filling his soul full of arrows and get on to forgiving him.

...maybe that was the moment he knew he was gone, when he gave Yuri the tanto to kill him and Yuri used it to nearly break his jaw. 

_How can I atone for my misdeeds?_ He’d asked Casey, that first day when she actually _wanted_ to see him, after they all healed from the Quoi Woods.

She smiled at him, bright and earnest and somehow mocking. _As punishment, you must become my right hand man._

His eyes were just like hers.

_Your life belongs to Brave Vesperia now._

It should hurt. It does hurt, but it’s different; there’s not that yawning, aching emptiness, forced along by an alien _thing_ that won’t let him sleep, won’t let him rot, won’t let him rest.

This is a healing hurt, a stretching hurt, like using muscles for the first time after years in bed. Like pulling at scar tissue, little by little, training it to move again.

He can dream. He can feel things. He can love.

Because he’s learned other kinds of respect, like for the Don, dear old Don Whitehorse who was strong and brave and true and one of the only people who was _real_ after Schwann was hatched, who taught Raven what it was to be a Guildman and to love it. He has.

But his first respect was his first love; he adored Casey with all his hero-worshiping little soul, she _taught_ him to respect and to love, to want more than wining and wenching and passing the day. He’d have been her lover if she’d ever even _looked_ like she wanted him, but he was her right hand, her loyal knight, until death. And beyond. And as that, she respected him... and taught him to respect himself.

Yuri respects everyone... to a point. Not to excess, never; he doesn’t _defer_ to people. Nobody’s ever going to earn that. But … he acknowledges them, teaches them to acknowledge themselves. 

Even if they’re on opposite sides. 

Even if they don’t trust their skills in all situations, or their dependability at all. 

He respected the sheltered princess, taught her to trust her _own_ decisions and her own wants and become a person. 

He respected the wannabe warrior sneak thief guild-jumper who believed, deep down, that all he was good for was running away, and taught him how much he actually could do for people and himself.

He respected the too-prickly, dangerous, isolated supergenius, and now she’s got friends and a little brother and a whole _world_ to improve.

He respected the sultry, too-dangerous woman of mystery, helped her step beyond her Mission to a real life, to a family.

He even respected fishy ol’ Raven. And this blackbird will always be grateful.

Even if Yuri will never love him back, will very likely never see that in him, that doesn’t matter. Casey never did, either. Damuron wasn’t afraid to love her, Schmuck or no; Raven knows that it doesn’t matter if he’s afraid or not, that hearts, even blastia ones, are not to be commanded.

Stars are for loving. They don’t have to love you back; they shine anyway, and show you how to shine, too.

Raven lifts his flask to Yuri, and to Casey, and to the morning star.


End file.
